missiles, plus M-52 mine disposal baskets — were fuel-limited to a hundred minutes in the air. Drop tanks could be fitted, but then the fuel weight/weapons equation shifted dramatically, making the missions doubly dangerous for the pilot. In short, as General Freeman was first to recognize in his forward HQ bunker less than forty miles from Poznan, his armies were the victims of their own success.
“Like small businesses,” he had told his aides. “All the business we want, fellas, and too little inventory.” After he’d broken out of the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket, the speed of his advance from NATO’s central front had been such that urgently needed fuel, ammunition, and food supplies had either been slowed or stopped altogether in the truck convoys’ attempt to keep up with the troops in the blizzards sweeping down from the Baltic and the North Sea. In such weather, artillery notwithstanding, the opinion of most Allied commanders was that neither side could mount major offensives, particularly fighter sorties — NATO air forces, as much as the Soviets, thankful for the respite of the snowstorms so they could attend to the high levels of maintenance demanded by state-of-the-art aircraft. In any case, the pilots of the “super” birds like the F-15 Eagles and MiG Foxbats were presently as worn out as their fighters’ engines. Furthermore, apart from the Luftwaffe and RAF risking their Tornadoes in zero visibility, subjecting other billion-dollar airplanes and pilots to dogfights in blizzard conditions was a losing proposition. For the Allied chiefs, it was viewed as a good time to pause and consolidate. In this they were in concert with Washington.
Not so for Douglas Freeman. He wanted to press on.
“Give me a fuel dump, Lord,” Freeman declared, studying the headquarters map of the curving Polish front beyond Poznan, “and I’ll be in Warsaw in two weeks! In another week I’ll be over the River Bug into Russia.”
Without turning from the map, Freeman addressed his aide, Colonel Norton. “Jim, I’ve gotta have gas. By God, we’ll fly fuel in here by the pallet if we have to. Like we did it inside the DB pocket. Meanwhile I don’t want anybody digging in for Christmas. Get as much as we can as far forward as we can. We can’t stop. Attack! Attack! Attack! — that’s the strategy. That’s the
“I needn’t tell you it’s a risk, General,” cautioned Norton anyway. “You could lose everything you’ve gained.”
“I know — I know. It’s against every military credo. But all we need is the gas, goddamn it! If we can get the gas up here, we can kick ass from here to Moscow.” Freeman paused, arms akimbo, looking up at the huge operations map, shaking his head. “We made one hell of a mistake, Jim — and I’ll be the first to admit it—” He paused. “Though I wouldn’t want that to get around.”
“What’s that, General?”
“That we — meaning everybody from the president down— screwed up royally when we thought that once we hit the Russian regulars, all their frappin’ republics would take advantage of it. Try like Siberia to break free of Moscow. Even help us. But—” the general sighed, his right-hand glove sweeping over the map beyond the Urals and the Caucasus. “—we should have known.
“I hope so, General.”
“So do I.” It was such a shocking, unpredictable thing for the general to say — to concede even the slightest doubt — that it had the effect of jolting Norton.
“General.”
“No, no.” Freeman shook his head. “I have no doubt about my troops. About the ground war. What I’m alluding to, Colonel, is a matter of time. What I’m concerned about is that if we don’t hit hard, and fast enough…”He paused and took a sip of coffee.
“What, General?”
“That some bastard’ll push the button.”
Knowing the general as well as he did, what disturbed Norton most was that if the general had seemingly envisaged the possibility of the Russians going nuclear — then Freeman had probably thought of doing it himself.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In Atlanta CDC–Center for Disease Control — another skull-and-crossbones pin, this one for the state of New York, was stuck into the map of the United States. There were now twenty-three pins clustered along the eastern seaboard, near Chicago and the Midwest, the others sprinkled throughout California, the major clusters of “stings,” meaning five or more acts of sabotage, in Silicone Valley, the site of some of the country’s leading electronic defense system manufacturers.
What was first thought to be only a New York problem because of the sabotage of Croton, Hillsview, and the other main reservoirs for New York, affecting eleven million people, was now a national crisis, affecting seventy-two million. Over a thousand cases of “arson” had been reported — many of the fires impossible to extinguish by water from city reservoirs because the water, once evaporated, left lethal residues of airborne poison. All but two of the twenty-three cities, Salt Lake City and Portland, declared martial law and curfews in an effort to contain growing crowds clamoring for water supplies. In Norfolk, Virginia, and in Puget Sound, north of Seattle, at the Bangor Sub Base, several nuclear submarines in for maintenance were ordered to stay in port, their salt/freshwater converters providing emergency drinking water for households with a ration of two gallons of water per day for a family of four.
National Guard units throughout the country on “shoot-to-kill” orders surrounded distilleries and bottled water depots, and in Colorado, more Guard units were deployed to turn back ad hoc convoys of armed civilians heading for Aspen and other winter resorts where fresh snow had not yet melted down into the contaminated water tables. Atlanta CDC issued a national alert — so urgent that it could not wait for the chiefs of staff’s normal clearance and so was disseminated under President Mayne’s “Executive Order” signature. The CDC alert was a warning that because of the poisoning that by now had been conveyed via myriad underground aquifers into the major U.S. water tables, “no water other than rainwater directly trapped by uncontaminated vessels would be safe” for at least three months. When President Mayne realized the enormity of the problem, he knew he was confronted by a danger whose implications posed a greater threat to the public than that posed to Lincoln during the threat of disunion. Already looting and attendant crime were the worst they had ever been.
As the president moved from his White House work study around to the Oval Office to address the nation, the kleig lights seemed to stun him momentarily and he used his notes, with Xeroxes of the Atlanta CDC crisis map, to shield himself from the glare.
“How long have we got?” he asked Trainor, who was grumpily telling the CBS mobile crew to clear the hallway.
“Six minutes, Mr. President,” Trainor replied.
As he raised his cup of coffee seconds before going on national TV to try to calm the nation, Mayne looked at the black liquid and put the cup down.
“It’s been tested, Mr. President,” an aide informed him. “Washington’s supply hasn’t been affected — so far.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Surely the capital would be the prime target?”
“We think,” suggested Trainor, “it’s a message. U.S. leadership can survive if it comes to terms.”
“With what? Chemical warfare?” snapped Mayne.
“With their terms,” responded Trainor.
